Palouse River
On a chilly morning, brightly sunlit, our crowd of intrepid kayakers set out on the Palouse River. They got so cold from the wind the Zodiac made that they began pulling on gloves and hoods. No sooner had they set out in their individual or twin kayaks, however, than they found they were far too hot and wished they had shed more layers of clothing. Millpond-smooth was the surface on which they paddled past the great basalt formations. They felt a shock of breathtaking silence whenever they paused. Not for long, however, because a buzzing noise from downstream brought more Zodiacs and more passengers who traveled a few inches higher off the water and went a little further upstream.
The morning’s other great attraction seen by all was the Palouse Falls. Reached by means of a yellow object which Trip had referred to as “a nice school bus,” the waterfall plunged into an immense luminous green pool. The light was so bright, the hills so treeless, and the humidity so low, that everyone could see objects on a horizon thirty miles distant with absolute clarity; colors never seemed more vivid than today. Harry Fritz had somehow arranged for the flow in the waterfall to increase as the morning continued, so the second group beheld an even grander spectacle than the first.
What could be more risky than drinking sangria in brilliant sunshine? This week’s passengers are obviously risk takers, because they washed down their lunchtime barbecue, taken on the sun-deck, with pints of it. A mysterious silence then settled over the ship as though everyone were taking a nap, but a dramatic confrontation awoke them at 3.00 p.m. Plucky little Sea Lion won a duel with a great oafish barge at the gates of the Lower Monumental Lock, after which everyone on board, tingling with pride in victory, went to listen to Professor Fritz’s second lecture. He made a crowd-pleasing reference to the Georgia Bulldogs and speculated that Meriweather Lewis cannot have been any girl’s dream date.
Professor Allitt followed up with a lecture on the American west after Lewis and Clark, weaving his way through a series of references to mammoths, self-inflicted torture, epidemics, cannibalism, Mexicans, Mormons, and self-righteousness. Further heroic exertions in the dining room ensued, after which Scilla took a starry-eyed crowd onto the upper deck to gaze at the Milky Way and learn the shapes of the constellations.
On a chilly morning, brightly sunlit, our crowd of intrepid kayakers set out on the Palouse River. They got so cold from the wind the Zodiac made that they began pulling on gloves and hoods. No sooner had they set out in their individual or twin kayaks, however, than they found they were far too hot and wished they had shed more layers of clothing. Millpond-smooth was the surface on which they paddled past the great basalt formations. They felt a shock of breathtaking silence whenever they paused. Not for long, however, because a buzzing noise from downstream brought more Zodiacs and more passengers who traveled a few inches higher off the water and went a little further upstream.
The morning’s other great attraction seen by all was the Palouse Falls. Reached by means of a yellow object which Trip had referred to as “a nice school bus,” the waterfall plunged into an immense luminous green pool. The light was so bright, the hills so treeless, and the humidity so low, that everyone could see objects on a horizon thirty miles distant with absolute clarity; colors never seemed more vivid than today. Harry Fritz had somehow arranged for the flow in the waterfall to increase as the morning continued, so the second group beheld an even grander spectacle than the first.
What could be more risky than drinking sangria in brilliant sunshine? This week’s passengers are obviously risk takers, because they washed down their lunchtime barbecue, taken on the sun-deck, with pints of it. A mysterious silence then settled over the ship as though everyone were taking a nap, but a dramatic confrontation awoke them at 3.00 p.m. Plucky little Sea Lion won a duel with a great oafish barge at the gates of the Lower Monumental Lock, after which everyone on board, tingling with pride in victory, went to listen to Professor Fritz’s second lecture. He made a crowd-pleasing reference to the Georgia Bulldogs and speculated that Meriweather Lewis cannot have been any girl’s dream date.
Professor Allitt followed up with a lecture on the American west after Lewis and Clark, weaving his way through a series of references to mammoths, self-inflicted torture, epidemics, cannibalism, Mexicans, Mormons, and self-righteousness. Further heroic exertions in the dining room ensued, after which Scilla took a starry-eyed crowd onto the upper deck to gaze at the Milky Way and learn the shapes of the constellations.
